Research and Development

R&D: Our backbone

Verdesian Life Sciences is a global leader in Nutrient Use Efficiency. We get there through our intense commitment to Research & Development (R&D) for nutrient use efficiency technologies that make farming more efficient, more sustainable, and more profitable.

This commitment to Research & Development ensures that Verdesian is consistently offering innovative, robust, and premium solutions to customers. These solutions are backed by industry-leading scientific studies and extensive laboratory, greenhouse, and field trial programs. Our R&D organization is both highly educated and highly experienced in the development and commercialization of nutrient use efficiency products. In our focus areas: biologicals, biostimulants, fertilizer enhancers, plant nutrients, as well as animal nutrition and aquaculture, we produce solutions to serve our customers globally through identifying, developing, registering, and commercializing the nutrient use efficiency R&D pipeline.

In addition, our Salt Lake City facility provides a focus on the development of biostimulant and nutritional products for row crops, specialty crops, animal, and aquaculture applications. In our Plant Physiology and Molecular Biology departments, we have been discovering modes of action of our products, focusing on stress physiology and expression of crop genetic potential, and subsequently maximizing crop yield and quality in harmony with the environment.

In the Animal Nutrition department, we concentrate on optimization of animal gut health and animal performance, and on improving aquaculture pond ecosystems to enhance production. Based on our innovative microbial fermentation, postbiotic and bioassay technology, we constantly develop new products to improve animal nutrition.

In our ISO 17025 accredited Analytical Quality Control department, we excel in performing quality control, EHS, regulatory, and R&D analysis to confirm quality of the products, enhance new product development, facilitate regulatory processes, and comply with environmental regulations. We support Analytical QC functions in other company locations. In a day-to-day operation we coordinate third party testing, perform 17 accredited analytical methods containing over 40 different analytes on 5-20 samples a day.

Amy Burton, Senior Director of Product Development

Amy Burton came to Verdesian from Bayer CropScience, where she was a team lead working in Trait Validation with soybean. Prior to that, she was a post-doctoral plant physiologist with the USDA in Raleigh, NC, working on trait characterization and genetic mapping in soybean for multiple abiotic stresses, including salinity, aluminum and ozone. Burton earned her Ph.D. at Penn State in a root ecophysiology & plant nutrition lab group. In her Ph.D. research, she identified root traits to optimize resource acquisition in corn. She earned a Master’s degree in plant physiology of ornamental crops.

Elizabeth Wozniak, Director of Biologicals R&D

For more than four decades, Elizabeth Wozniak has conducted research in the fields of plant and animal physiology, biochemistry, analytical chemistry and molecular biology. She joined Cytozyme Laboratories, Inc., in 1981 as a research scientist and quickly became the R&D Director just three years later. She has developed more than 100 formulations during her career.

Wozniak received a prestigious award from the Minister of Science in Poland for her research on plant adaptation to low temperature. In addition, she is one of the main contributors in the development of Biostimulant regulations and recognition through The Fertilizer Institute’s Biostimulant Council and Biostimulant Industry Workgroup.

Wozniak obtained her M.S. degree and Ph.D. in Biology from the University of Warsaw, Poland, and completed the UNESCO-sponsored International Training Course in molecular biology, biochemistry and biophysics.